Partners Stole Drugs, Cash, Ex-Agent Says : Narcotics: He testifies that the three netted millions in thefts from dealers, stash houses and even from the DEA’s headquarters in Los Angeles.

A former federal drug agent on Thursday told jurors, in graphic detail, how he and two other agents went on a crime spree over several years in which they stole drugs and cash from dealers, stash houses and even from the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Los Angeles headquarters.

So audacious was the scheme, which netted them millions of dollars in drug profits, that the former agent, John Anthony Jackson, testified that he cut stolen cocaine for illegal street sales at night in the DEA’s offices in the World Trade Center downtown.

Jackson is a key government witness in the DEA corruption trial of former agent Darnell Garcia, 43, of Rancho Palos Verdes, who is charged with drug trafficking, money laundering and conveying intelligence information to a fugitive drug dealer.

Jackson accused his fellow agent of participating with him in a wide range of crimes between 1983 and 1988, including breaking into a Pasadena garage, where they ripped off a Colombian drug cache of 180 kilos of cocaine, worth a potential $36 million in street sales; orchestrating diversions at DEA headquarters to steal drugs from the agency’s evidence vault and almost $100,000 in drug money from a nearby cashier’s office; instructing Jackson and another agent how to hide their drug profits in secret Swiss bank accounts, and harboring drug fugitives in Garcia’s apartment in Bunker Hill Towers downtown.

Jackson’s daylong testimony provided moments of high drama in the second week of a trial growing out of the DEA’s worst corruption scandal. Under rapid-fire questioning from Assistant U.S. Atty. Joyce Karlan, he described a series of drug thefts that quickly made the agents millionaires.

Neither Jackson nor Garcia showed outward emotion. Jackson looked at his former colleague only once, when U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. asked him to identify the defendant.

During a recess, Jackson, 41, of Claremont, shook hands and hugged other DEA agents in the court corridor who had come to see him testify. Responding to reporters’ questions, he suggested that Garcia’s chances of being acquitted were slim.

“He should have gotten off the Titanic when it first started going down,” Jackson said, referring to the government investigation that resulted in the 1988 indictment of the three agents.

As evidence mounted against the three, Jackson and the third agent, Wayne Countryman, 47, of Walnut, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges last August. The two were told by prosecutors they might receive reduced prison sentences--Jackson 15 years, Countryman, seven years--if they cooperated and testified against Garcia, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence.

Jackson, a stocky man known as “J.J.” among his associates, said he harbored no animosity toward Garcia. Of his stinging testimony, Jackson told reporters Garcia knew that he--Jackson--was doing what he had to do.

“He knows that’s the way the cookie crumbles,” Jackson said.

But if Garcia and Jackson kept their cool, some DEA agents in the courtroom audience had difficulty controlling their emotions toward their colleagues’ predicament.

“It really, really hurts to see someone who was your friend do this,” said an agent who had worked closely with Jackson and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “J.J. was a good agent. He made a lot of cases. We’re all touched by this.”

Much of Jackson’s 15-year career with the DEA was spent in dangerous undercover work ferreting out drug dealers. He told jurors it was in this role, in 1981, that he posed as the nephew of Brooklyn, N.Y., drug dealer Mahlon Steward. It wasn’t long, he testified, before the two developed a “brotherly” relationship and began discussing the possibility of putting together their own illicit drug deals.

Steward, 60, the government’s first witness last week, testified how, beginning in 1983, he trafficked in heroin and cocaine supplied to him by Jackson and Garcia.

Jackson described how he and Garcia “made arrangements to adulterate a pound of (seized) cocaine and subsequently sold it.”

In one of their early sales, he said, Garcia returned with $21,000 in a paper bag and evenly split the profits among the three agents.

Adulterating narcotics, Jackson explained, meant he would extract a pound of relatively pure cocaine from a kilo (2.2 pounds) and replace it with baking soda to cover up the theft. He said he performed the procedure at night in the DEA’s downtown headquarters.

In another bold theft in July, 1984, Jackson said he and Garcia conspired to steal almost $100,000 in drug proceeds that had been left in a box in the DEA cashier’s room. He said that while Garcia “distracted” a DEA agent who was monitoring the room via a television camera, he--Jackson--walked into the unlocked room and absconded with the cash.

Similarly, Jackson said, in October, 1984, while he distracted a DEA guard at the agency’s 800-square-foot evidence vault, Garcia stole one kilo of heroin. “Garcia simply walked down the aisle and removed it,” Jackson said.

Their biggest theft, which made the three agents instant millionaires, Jackson said, occurred in November, 1985, when they discovered the 180 kilos in Pasadena--a theft he called “the Big Rip.”

The defense is to cross-examine Jackson today.